Just looked at the picture Andrew and noticed that the building is at an angle. If it is a prefab you have built and then imported into the map and then rotated it will be very difficult infact damn right impossible to portal up to it.

To portal correctly you must have the grid turned on or your brushes will never touch other brushes exactly. When a prefab is imported and rotated (or even sometimes just imported) it will never snap to the grid properly enough to portal to.

Rogue (Schis)

I discovered when trying to portal rotated buildings. I found that the portals can actually go into the structural brushes (but not out the other side) and still work correctly, without errors - as long as there isn't an actual gap.

that did make it clear. thanks for that explanation. I have one question then. You can portal up to the skybox and use it to seal the portal...right? I portaled a map, not sure if it does any good. but all i did was make a big plus sign with portal no draw. the portal went all the way from the bottom of the sky box to the top. what it did was turn the map into four sections. then i made every other wall portal. so it went portal, portal no draw, portal, portal no draw. when i compiled, there was no leake and the skybox was the only thing that sealed it on every edge.

Portalling to the skybox does seal a portal cell, however just using a portal brush as you have described will probably not give any fps advantage.

If you can see from one portal to another (ie theres no structural brushes obscuring the view) then it will draw whats in the portal cell. So if all you have is portals and no structural brushes attached to them then it will make no difference.

Imagine the portal is glass if you can see through it then its gonna draw it.

One note about portalling to the skybox - as the portals become so tall chances are that even if structural brushes are there they are not high enough to block the players "view" into the portal cells. Although theres nothing to draw except the skybox the cpu has to work overtime working out that there is nothing to draw in the portal cells, which may cause client side lag - and reduce fps slightly.

Rogue (Schis)


edited on Jan. 5, 2007 06:23 am by Schis